Early Days
by wordybirdy
Summary: Very little has been recorded from that first year of meeting: 1881. Watson redresses the balance, while obsessing a fraction more than greatly. Unrequited love SH/JW. Nothing graphic. Canon-H, as opposed to Silly-H which is a whole other universe.


I should very much like, by way of this small piece of inadequate writing, to ask you, my reader, one question. Perhaps two. Just supposing, therefore, that you met a someone for the first time, and they intrigued you to the point where you were compelled to take full written note of their character, their talents and their weaknesses. (A dubious action, to be sure, when all is said and done.) How soon after that point, then, might one know _that person – _albeit that fellow or that woman – to be their "soul mate"? Would a single day seem like madness? A week scarcely any better?

Let us say one month, then, after a fellow took written note, painstaking and considered, and then sat back to survey it and to ponder, and then to look and think a little more. He had to admit it to himself, then. The Unattainable One. That staggeringly haughty, breathtakingly arrogant, _overwhelmingly charismatic_ gentleman with whom he had only recently begun to share rented rooms, was that aforementioned spirit. No question, no slightest doubt of it.

Afghanistan would have been a far safer environment for me then, than those large and airy rooms at 221B Baker Street. The year was 1881, and I, John H. Watson M.D., late of the Fifth Northumberland Fusiliers and the Berkshires, had fallen hopelessly, irrevocably in – Well, enough, shall we just say that _everything_ was hopeless. Or so I thought then.

Sherlock Holmes, at age twenty-seven, was not a paradigm of virtue by any long stretch of the imagination. For depending upon his state of mind and his well-being he was prone to bouts of narcotic abuse; of morphine and cocaine, a seven-per-cent solution of the latter. A black depression would fall upon him until the saviour – a new case, or a conundrum – would snatch his hand and draw him back into wakeful reality. He paid scant attention to any of my scolding. This was how he was, and indeed, how he had been since the age of eighteen. He saw no reason or acceptable merit in changing his lifestyle on account of the warnings from one such as I.

I would sit and watch him in his languidity. I would fetch him cups of tea and urge him to take more than a mouthful of the tasteful meals that our landlady, Mrs. Hudson, would prepare. His conversation – never one for small talk – was almost non-existent, and yet I tried my hardest to engage him, to bring him out, beyond, away, from that infernal poison.

Yes, I would sit and watch a little too long, in the blissful knowledge that he should not know and should not care.

He was brusque, very often, with those whom he deemed as beneath his own intellectual plain. That was, of course, almost everyone. He could be incurably lazy, incorrigibly vain; an automaton, Bohemian, egotist and one deficient in human sympathy.

Still I adored him.

He was possessed of genius, a fierce proponent of justice and fighter for the greater good. He could be courteous when the mood took him, and unfailingly gentle with anyone timid or vulnerable who stood before him. He was truthful, staunch and loyal, with a quick wit and warm humour.

And so it was that I began to dream of him. In my dreams, Holmes was pliable, willing, desirous. In my dreams, I would undress him, or he would disrobe before me. And I would fasten my eyes to every hard line, every taut and tempting rein of muscled flesh. And I would reach out to touch him, to kiss his full mouth and to stroke us through our pleasure. And then I would awaken, my sheets spoiled or quite close to it, aching, wanting and always alone.

Holmes was resolute in his contempt of the softer passions. We would sit across from one another before the fireplace or the dining table, and he would pour out a stream of scorn at stories containing any _affaire de coeur._

"Women are foolish, Watson," said he. "The same failing applies to most men wherever love is concerned."

I would smile and say nothing. I assumed him to be as cold-blooded as a fish in that regard, and my misfortune.

Spring fell into Summer, so evolving into crisp Autumn and eventually, Winter. The beginning of Advent saw us looking out as one from our sitting-room window at the merry shoppers with their parcels and their bundles.

"The first of December," Holmes declared, "with the London populace already running around as a great headless chicken. It is as if someone tugged a cord and brought these marionettes to life. I am not going outside today."

"We shall stay indoors then," I replied.

"Well, _you_ don't have to, Watson," said he. "Why do you not pay a visit upon the young widow on whom I believe you have had your eye these past three weeks."

I blinked slowly. "Which widow? Mrs. Patterling? You are very much mistaken, Holmes. She is a dear friend of Mrs. Stamford. It would be impolite of me to pass the lady in the street without wishing her a good morning."

Holmes sniffed.

For a fellow who was so accurate upon the matter of boot laces and thumbnails, he had scored a misfire on this occasion. We spoke of it no further.

I had seen him stripped to the waist on no fewer than seven occasions. In his room, standing at the wash bowl with the bedroom door ajar; I could not help but peep. Exiting the bathroom in trouser bottoms, ruffing his hair with a coarse towel, wrapped up in his own thoughts and barely noticing my passing him on the landing. Sitting patiently for me at the breakfast table after a rough-and-tumble casework, while I, with my tweezers, extracted thin slivers of glass from his skin; my heart pounding, telling myself to _stop it this instant, before he notices, stop being such a bloody fool, John._ And I know that I shall never stop, shall always be in thrall to this, to him, to these small snatches of brief intimacy.

He would jump up to shake my hand on those occasions where a chemical experiment might prove successful. A mystery solved or a hard case won earned me a hearty slap upon the back. Occasionally, while walking together through the streets of London, he would link his arm through mine. And occasionally, I would even dare to initiate the same. I would tend his bruises, cuts and scrapes, and it would take every ounce of willpower to not linger any longer than was vital.

His features in repose were brooding, handsome. He would curl up in his chair, knees drawn up to the chin while he smoked or meditated, or looked around as a saucer-eyed owl, as if recommitting objects, the room, the tip of his own hawk-like nose to deepest memory.

"You are debating where our Christmas tree should be situated," I said, amused by him.

Holmes looked up, a slight frown creasing his brow.

"I am doing nothing of the sort," said he. "We are not having a Christmas tree."

He said this last with some disdain.

"But-" I began. I stopped. It had never crossed my mind that we should not be decorating our rooms for our first Christmas spent together. All my secretive preparation of holly and cotton, coloured bows and paper chains, and yes, a _tree_, looked as if it should combust – _poof!_ – and be as a vanished crackle from the coal fire. "But why not?" I persisted. "But not even holly, or ribbons?"

Holmes's top lip curled.

"I do not celebrate this time of year. It is all absolutely ridiculous," he informed me. "Displaying a _tree_ in a corner of one's sitting-room is a madness I cannot tolerate." He paused for a moment. "How much holly? How many ribbons?"

"I... am not sure?" I said. "A little?"

My friend sighed laboriously, as if it took a considerable effort upon his part. He regarded me with both eyes narrowed.

"It is so important to you?" he enquired.

"Well, yes, in that we always decorated our old family home when I was a boy. And now this is my home, and so I thought that..." I tailed off again.

Holmes's cheeks had flushed slightly upon that last sentence, and his features softened. He leaned across to pat at the nearest section of me that he could reach: my knee.

"Then you must decorate," said he. "But please, no tree."

"No tree," I agreed, thrilled by the brief touch; the small décor victory glowing.

I purchased entirely too much holly; a plethora of ribbons; a handcart of cotton. Holmes was in town on business upon that frosty morning of Christmas Eve, as I set to with a childlike enthusiasm. I left nothing to waste. The room was a grotto, a vision, a splendour. It had taken me two hours, and my shoulder and my knee were screaming protest.

My friend arrived home from his travels, strode into our room with a greeting primed upon his lips. He came to an abrupt halt, one hand already reaching to his forehead from the shock.

"By the devil himself, Watson, what on earth have you done?"

"I have decorated, Holmes," I told him proudly. "See how beautiful it looks."

"I am looking," said he, and doing so.

"It is very festive, is it not?"

"I am not sure," replied Holmes, in all great seriousness.

And yet he did not press any request that I should tear it all down. He sat in his chair by the fire, rubbing his hands for the warmth and then gazing around, perhaps still bemused by my handiwork. We shared hot roasted chestnuts and a jug of mulled wine. We played cards. Come the late afternoon, my friend reached for his violin. A soft Christmas melody filled the room, and I sat back to watch him play. _I love you_, I thought, and the rich wine warmed me through.

Time would ease these feelings, I felt sure of it. Time would soften the pain of all this yearning. I might even chance to meet another soul with whom to fall in love, and that love would be requited.

I had bought Holmes several gifts, which I had wrapped up neatly, with fond care. A bottle of his favourite Port, a pouch of chemistry tools, a leather-bound volume of stories by Poe.

He was surprised and, I think, even a little alarmed to receive them the following morn. He unwrapped them all slowly, inspecting each one, looking up as if to wonder "For me? A gift?".

"Thank you," he said, earnest and touched. "I did not expect anything," he continued, "I have nothing to give you in return." He seemed embarrassed by this confession.

"That does not matter," I told him, truthfully, "for the joy is in the giving."

He stood and moved towards me then, to draw me to him for almost three seconds in embrace.

"Merry Christmas," said he, withdrawing, awkward.

That was my gift. It was the best gift that I had ever yet received, up to that point.

It would be a further four years before the either of us took a second step.


End file.
